THE timing was mysterious. A press release from Shoalhaven City Council revealing Shaolin Abbot Shi Yongxin and renowned architect Yung Ho Chang had paid a visit to the Comberton Grange site on which they plan to build a temple and tourist complex was dispatched at 7.30 on Wednesday night. But that’s not the point.
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The local media consternation related to the fact the release was issued after the event. With such a high-profile visitor in charge of such a significant and contentious local project, most media outlets would have jumped at the opportunity to be present and to put to the abbot questions the community want answered.
Instead, what we got was a sanitised version of events.
We are told the reason it was not issued until 7.30pm was that the site visit went for some time; the mayor then had to go to Ulladulla for the community ice forum and was unable to sign off on the release until that late hour in the news cycle.
Given we were not invited to attend – because, we were told, the abbot wanted the visit to remain private – we will pose the questions we would have liked to put to him and to Mayor Gash – here.
To the abbot, have you abandoned your desire to proceed with the housing subdivision and golf course, knocked on the head by the Planning Assessment Commission? Will you attempt to have PAC’s ruling overturned at a later date?
To Mayor Gash, why won’t Shoalhaven City Council adopt a motion in support of the PAC decision on the scale of the Shaolin project? Would this not calm the troubled waters between yourself and your local counterparts in the NSW government?
And finally, to all, if the abbot so desperately wanted this visit to be kept private why was it detailed in a council press with accompanying, uncaptioned photographs? If this was an attempt at tight media management, it was clumsy and ill-considered.
